Friday, June 17, 2011

Replication Triangulation or Strangulation

Domino administrators are known for excessive replication of everything. Names.nsf primarily, but also important files, like our own mail files. In some cases multiple copies of everything, and on USB or CD or DVD.

One caveat in doing all of these copies is that there is a clean environment and some logic to replication.

While this happens to many employees, it doesn't usually happen to an admin. In this case it was my mail file.

My primary desktop was fine, but my traveling netbook was not replicating.

I was seeing the "invalid or nonexistent document" message in the replication tab. But no other errors.

Yes I did what you would do:
Copied at OS level my mail file, no dice
Replicated a new copy, no dice
Ran Updall, Fixup and Compact on the mail file, no dice
Shut down one client to test the other, no dice

After asking in one of the Skype chats about it I tried something else which then broke all replication!
What did I do? I changed the replication settings, this is on a 8.5.2 client, ODS 51, and under Space Savers tried setting retrieve these documents to "All". Bad idea, don't do this. Reverted it back to "Those matching the selected criteria" and got my original desktop back.

So with no new ideas from Skype I noticed I was getting multiple copies of my contacts. Not duplicates, but replication showed 2 or 3 times as many as there should be always replicating. I began to wonder why.

It turns out, one of the 2 clients Personal Names.nsf was not using the 8.5.2 template. No idea which one it was using as the properties showed no entry.

Replaced the design template form the local version of pernames.ntf and tested it. NO DICE!

What was wrong now? Checked the properties...Template 8.0.1?!

Turns out a virtual link I use to connect to a 20 year history of Notes nsf's and ntf's held in it an older template. Deleted that one, replaced design, again, this time with a proper 8.5.2 (Traveler has been trolling for hours, I had to charge my phone via my pc) template and tried again. Perfect it worked!

Now to try this at all of them. Checked all templates, mail and pnab and then copied the good copy to the other and got replication going again.

All seemed fine, until an hour or 2 later, same problem, netbook replica was broken again. Turns out if your PNAB gets corrupted, all hell breaks loose.

Quiet and normal replication again. Nothing like a half day wasted, hope you fair better in your endeavors.